A Question…

For all of you legal people out there. How can they use a field drug test to make arrests if they don’t know how accurate it is?

Florida man arrested when officer mistakes Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze for meth
Washington Post
By Cleve R. Wootson Jr.
July 29, 2016

It wasn’t the first time someone claimed a Krispy Kreme doughnut was a type of drug. But the joke wasn’t funny for a Florida man who was arrested when an officer mistook doughnut glaze for methamphetamine.

Now Daniel Frederick Rushing is looking to sue the Orlando Police Department, which is also facing heat for its inaccurate roadside drug test.
[…]
It wasn’t the first time someone claimed a Krispy Kreme doughnut was a type of drug. But the joke wasn’t funny for a Florida man who was arrested when an officer mistook doughnut glaze for methamphetamine.

Now Daniel Frederick Rushing is looking to sue the Orlando Police Department, which is also facing heat for its inaccurate roadside drug test.

Now here is the kicker,

A New York Times investigation on roadside drug tests found that the testing kits used by Florida officers are far from reliable:

There are no established error rates for the field tests, in part because their accuracy varies so widely depending on who is using them and how. Data from the Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab system show that 21 percent of evidence that the police listed as methamphetamine after identifying it was not methamphetamine, and half of those false positives were not any kind of illegal drug at all. In one notable Florida episode, Hillsborough County sheriff’s deputies produced 15 false positives for methamphetamine in the first seven months of 2014.

A spokesperson for the Orlando Police Department told WFTV “there is no mechanism in place for easily tracking the number of, or results of, field drug testing.”

So tell me, how can you base an arrest on a test that the accuracy of it is not known? You can cause major harm to a person’s by giving them an arrest record. Their name is usually published in local newspapers as “Arrested for possession of controlled substance.” Many businesses check backgrounds of prospective employees and it may also show up on credit reports.

I hope he sues the pants off of them.